fertility of immigrant women in italy ......characterizing migrant flows (mussino et al., 2015). in...

Rivista Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica Volume LXIX n. 2 Aprile-Giugno 2015

FERTILITY OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN ITALY:

OUTCOMES FROM UNCONVENTIONAL DATA1

Patrizia Giannantoni and Giuseppe Gabrielli

1. Introduction

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, immigration has reached

unexpected and exceptional levels that transformed Italy in one of the main

European host countries (Sobotka, 2009; Strozza, 2010). Moreover, the aspect of

immigration in Italy has changed its characteristics: workers alone, both men and

women, were prevalent in the past, while in recent years immigrant families and

family reunification have become particularly relevant, reflecting a continuous

process of settlement (Dalla Zuanna et al., 2009).

Regular immigrant women have increased in Italy during the inter-census

period 2002-2011 respectively from 676 thousands to 2 million and 61 thousands.

Moreover, an increasing female participation was observed in the composition by

sex of migration flows to Italy (Impicciatore, Strozza, 2015). Looking at the

residence permits, in 2013 over the 53% of women arrived in Italy for family

reasons, while only 23% for work reasons. Another important phenomenon is the

increasing number of births with both foreign parents that constantly increased up

to 14.5 every 100 live births in 2011.

Among these aspects, this paper focuses on the immigrant population’s

reproductive behaviors, which appear remarkable when considering the Italian

model of fertility, where immigrant women provide significant contribution. It is

generally known that Italian fertility is one of the lowest in the world (Billari,

2008) and that the slight increase recorded in the last few years is in part due to the

presence of foreign women (Sobotka, 2008; Ferrara et al., 2009).

In Italy recent studies have tried to understand the characteristics and the

determinants of foreigners’ fertility (Mussino, Strozza, 2012; Ortensi, 2015),

mainly founding strong differences by citizenship and migratory strategies.

However, an in-depth exploration of individual factors affecting childbearing was

not possible to date, because of the paucity on micro data at national level.

1This work is the result of a close collaboration between the authors. As for this version, sections 3, 5

and 6 by P. Giannantoni; sections 1, 2 and 4 by G. Gabrielli.

166 Volume LXIX n. 2 Aprile-Giugno 2015

This study will try to contribute to the debate using an unconventional survey

not designed to study fertility patterns. Data used come from the 2009 “Reddito e

condizioni di vita delle famiglie con stranieri” (Income and Living Conditions of

Households with Foreigners) survey. The aim is to individuate the main individual

determinants of fertility for immigrant women in Italy, particularly looking at

women characteristics and migratory differentials.

The article is structured as follow: the next section contains the theoretical

framework; in the third section, the data and the method of analysis are described;

in the fourth and fifth sections, the descriptive data and the results of

multidimensional analysis are showed; in the final section, the main outcomes and

some conclusions are discussed.

2. Theoretical background

Fertility and family formation of migrants has been marginalized theoretically,

methodologically, and empirically until the late 1980s. The main reasons for the

scarcity of studies on this issue were the absence of data, the emphasis on the

individual as economic actor, and the predominance of a view based on the

“dichotomy of male producer and female reproducer” (Kofman, 2004: p. 243). In

the last threedecades this topic has attracted the growing interest of researchers first

in North American and Asian Pacific countries, and subsequently in Europe, with

the increasing recognition of the connection existing between the migratory

strategies and the family projects. Within the mainstream hypotheses about

migration and fertility, the importance of the role played by women's migratory

patterns and its effect on fertility after migration has been considered in different

ways at individual level. In particular, scholars showed that the heterogeneity of the

fertility behaviors depends on the demographic and social characteristics of the

immigrants, their geographical origin, and migration strategies (Carlson, 1985).

Among the immigrants’ characteristics influencing fertility, emphasis was given

to their countries of origin that is often considered a proxy of their values and

cultural heritage, which can be maintained after migration (Coleman, 1994;

Gabrielli et al., 2007). Therefore, persons from different geographical origins may

show differences in reproductive behaviors in the same country of destination

(Andersson, Scott, 2007; Bijwaard, 2010). This is particularly true for the Italian

context, where previous studies have described the wide variety of origins

characterizing migrant flows (Mussino et al., 2015). In adding, both the age at

arrival and the fertile period after migration may affect the childbearing of

immigrant women in the destination country (Wolf, 2014). Adserà and Ferrer

(2011) noted how childbearing increases smoothly with increasing age at migration

Rivista Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica 167

because of a reducing assimilation to low fertility of natives. The authors describe

how "there are different mechanisms through which age at arrival may be relevant

to immigrant outcomes ... moreover if there are critical ages at which individuals

learn a particular behavior or skill" (p.16). We need to control the exposure time of

fertility and the length of stay in the destination country in order to edge against

compositional effect.

Gender relations strongly affect the migration and fertility behaviors of women

(Carling, 2005; Hiller, McCaig, 2007). Gender roles and norms in the home country

determine women’s social, occupational and economic positions, women’s

participation in international migration and in turndifferent outcomes in the new

country of settlement. An egalitarian gender system incentives women to migrate as

forerunners, independently from a partner. These women can be either single or in

union, leaving the family behind. Scholars have underlined how the experience of

migration changes dramatically between forerunners and followers (Nedoluzhko,

Andersson, 2007; Ortensi, 2015). First migrant women, in most cases, migrate with a

project related to work and childbearingcan be considered as secondary goal. Family

migrants are, conversely, less or not subjected to the trade-off between work and

family. Women who migrate for family reasons choose often not to enter into the

labour market, as the commitment to family life is the main aim after migration.

Women’s educational attainment and participation in the labor market are also

individual characteristics reflecting the socioeconomic conditions. They both

constitute important elements in shaping fertility after migration. Educational

attainment, generally speaking, depresses fertility (Skirbekk, 2008), however this

link is morecomplex when it concerns immigrant women (Adserà and Ferrer,

2011). Work conditions in the country of destination need also to be taken into

account, independently from educational attainment, as under qualified

employment is extremely frequent among immigrants. Immigrate women are often

employed in time-consuming low-skilled jobs, that are not easily compatible with

childbearing (Andersson, Scott, 2007). The interplay and the complexity of these

individual and migratory characteristics call for further investigation in their

relationship with fertility.

3. Data and methods

The survey on “Reddito e condizioni di vita delle famiglie con stranieri”

(Income and Living Conditions of Households with Foreigners) has been conducted

by Istat in 2009. This survey ‘replicates’ the EU-SILC one in terms of

questionnaires, techniques, imputation and integration of data, but it focuses merely

on foreign population. It collects data on about 9,000 foreign individuals aged 15 and


older. The great advantage of this source is that the selected sample is representative

of the foreignersresiding in Italy (weighted data) and the sample size allows us to

analyze the data distinguished by citizenships. However, the main disadvantage is

that the survey is focused on income, poverty and living conditions; thus it is not

targeted to study fertility and it does not provide any direct information on the

number of children ever born to women and women’s childbearing histories.

Nevertheless, it is possible to reconstruct information on fertility behaviors with

the application of the own-children method (Cho, Retherford, Choe, 1986). It

employs numbers and ages (or birthdates) of young co-residing children, who are

unlikely to have left home, to provide estimates of the numbers and/or timing of

births to women in the same household. Born for fertility reconstruction in historical

populations, in recent years such method has been applied to surveys in several

European countries for the study of fertility both at macro level with the estimation

of TFR (Bordone et al., 2009) and at micro level for investigating determinants of

fertility decisions (Klesment et al., 2014).

The used data provide the identification number of the mother for each child in

the household, allowing the right mother-child match. Moreover, to control the

permanence of children in the mother’s household at the time of interview, according

to the literature (Rondinelli et al., 2006) we limit the age at interview of mothers to

40 years oldin order to have the majority of children relatively young and therefore

less likely to have left parental house.

What is important to underline is that, as far as we are concern, this method is

still rarely applied to immigrant population above all in the Italian context. This kind

of application brings at least another additional issue to the methodology: migrant

women can have children left abroad. These children obviously do not co-reside in

the household at destination and their omission would bias downwards fertility

estimations. In our data we have a dummy about the presence/absence of children

born abroad, thus we were able to control at least partially such issue.

We decided to select only foreign women (according to their citizenship) arrived

in Italy after the age of 14 years. We excluded from our analysis also women married

to an Italian partner, as they would constitute a very specific subgroup whose

reproductive behaviors are expected to be significantly influenced by the presence of

the native partner. The final sample is constitute of 2.388 women that are weighted in

all our analysis to represent the foreigners residing in Italy. This research aims at

investigating fertility of immigrant women in Italy, analyzing the number of children

born after migration (since now on only "children"). We identified children born after

migration on the base of their birth date, which must be subsequent to the date of the

mother’s arrival in Italy. Co-resident children born before their mother arrived in

Italy are therefore excluded from our analysis.


In the multivariate analysis, we applied Poisson regression models, as the target

variable is a count data. This is a form of regression analysis which assumes the

response variable Y to have a Poisson distribution, and the logarithm of its expected

value can be modeled by a linear combination of unknown parameters. The basic

formulation of a Poisson model is the following:

ln(𝑌𝑖) = ln(𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒) + 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑋1 + … + 𝛽𝑛𝑋𝑛 + 𝜀𝑖 (1)

Immigrant women are exposed to the risk of the events, i.e. having children after

migration, for a different amount of time, depending on their age at arrival and their

age at the interview. We adjusted the Poisson model with the length of fertility

period spent in Italy, considered as the “exposure”, i.e. a predictor with a coefficient

constrained to 1. We illustrate the effects of independent variables on fertility

expressed by means of Incidence Rate Ratios (IRR).

A first group of variables is related to migration patterns and the context of

origin, namely: citizenship, age at arrival, typology of migration. Typology of

migration is a dummy variable defined according to two characteristics: union status

of the woman at arrival (in union or single) and order of arrival with the partner

(woman or man forerunner). An independent migrant is either a woman who arrives

in Italy as a single, or a married woman who arrives before her partner (Ortensi,

2015). Conversely, a family migrant is a married woman who arrives together or

rejoins her partner at destination. We included in the “family migrant” also women

who marry in the immediate period after their arrival (


exists. In all the models, we control for children born abroad, regardless if they live

in cohabitation or abroad.

4. Descriptive results

Looking at the characteristics of immigrant women, the distribution by

citizenship shows a net prevalence of the Romanians (29.3%), followed by the

Albanians (11.2%) and the Moroccans (9.4%). The Ukrainians/Moldovans

represent 6.4% of the immigrant women, whereas the Chinese and the Poles are

respectively 4.6% and 3.9%. The rest of women come in equal proportion from the

rest of the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and East Europe areas (the

percentage of each area varies from 7% to 10%). The only exception is represented

by immigrants originating from Europe-15 (EU15) and other developed countries

(MDCs including the ones of North America, Oceania, Israel and Japan) who

represent only 2.0% of immigrant women.

The majority of women arrived in Italy as independent migrant (66.5%) and

before starting their reproductive life, i.e. without children born before migration

(70.7%). However, these proportions are extremely heterogeneous according to the

different citizenship: the Moroccans, the Albanians and the Poles assume the

highest quota of women without children born before migration (respectively

83.8%, 81.4% and 78.2%), while the Ukrainians/Moldavians, the Romanians and

the Chinese assume the lowest quota (respectively 56.4%, 65.4% and 66.2%).

Regardless the country of origin, the sampled women have on average 31 years

old at interview and arrived in Italy at the mean age of 24.5 years old (the age

range is in both cases 15-40) and spent in Italy a period of 6.6 fertile years during

which they gave birth to less thanone child per woman on average (0.6). However,

the number of children born to these women after migration shows a marked

variability ranging from zero to six. In particular, 60.2% of women has no children

on average, 23.3% one child and 16.5% more than one child (see table 1).

Table 1 depicts also migratory characteristics described above in association

with the fertility outcomes. Obviously, the higher is the age at arrival the lower is

the number of children born after migration but this effect depends directly on the

reduction of the exposure period, when a woman arrives at older ages. We will able

to control such issue in the multivariate analysis (see section 3).

Similarly, women, who express yet their reproductive behavior before migration

in Italy, assume the lowest fertility level. Among them, 78.0% had not children in

Italy and only 0.6% had three or more children. Immigrant women with no children

born abroad assume very different quota in the two considered categories

(respectively 52.6% and 4.2%).


The same pattern occurs considering the typology of migration: women who

arrived in Italy as independent assume significant low fertility than women arrived

together or after her partner: 87.9% of the former group had less than two children,

while 25.2% of the latter group had at least two children.

According to country of citizenship and not considering the EU15 and the other

MDC countries group, the Ukrainians/Moldavians assume the lowest fertility levels

(84.0% have no children) while the Moroccans the opposite (12.4% have three or

more children). The Poles and the Romanians (which is the most numerous group)

assume also low child percentages together with the Latin Americans. Conversely,

the Chinese have high number of children (43.7% have more than one child)

together with Africans.

Table 1 - Number of children after migration by selected women’migratory characteristics.

Women characteristics Number of children after migration (%)

0 1 2 3 and plus Total

Age at arrival

15-20 52.5 25.4 16.7 5.4 100.0 21-25 52.0 28.5 15.7 3.8 100.0 26-30 63.8 21.6 13.1 1.5 100.0 31-40 82.8 13.1 4.1 0.0 100.0 Children born before migration

No 52.6 25.4 17.8 4.2 100.0 Yes 78.0 18.6 2.8 0.6 100.0 Typology of migration

Independent 67.7 20.2 9.8 2.3 100.0 Family 45.0 29.8 20.5 4.7 100.0 Country/Area of citizenship

Romania 77.6 18.0 3.9 0.5 100.0 Albania 42.9 32.2 22.1 2.8 100.0 Poland 75.3 11.9 10.7 2.1 100.0 Ukraine and Moldova 84.0 14.1 1.9 0.0 100.0 EU15 and other MDCs 87.1 4.3 8.6 0.0 100.0 Other Europe 58.7 22.6 14.4 4.3 100.0 Morocco 36.5 25.5 25.6 12.4 100.0 Other Africa 36.3 32.2 24.0 7.5 100.0 China 30.8 25.5 36.5 7.2 100.0 Other Asia 46.1 36.8 16.1 1.0 100.0 Latin America 74.0 19.5 5.8 0.7 100.0 Total 60.2 23.3 13.3 3.2 100.0

Source: our elaborations on “Reddito e condizioni di vita delle famiglie con stranieri” data, 2009.


5. Multivariate approach: the Poisson model

We modeled our data through Poisson regressions using a stepwise procedure.

We introduced the migratory characteristics included in descriptive analysis (i.e.

age at arrival, children born before migration, typology of migration, area of

citizenship) as first, followed by individual covariates (educational attainment and

occupational status) and completed with macro-area of residence in the last step.

All the models have been controlled by the length of the fertile period the woman

had spent in Italy, included in the model as the offset. The likelihood estimations

show in table 2 an increasing significance of the nested models. In all the models

the age at arrival shows a slight ∩-shape of the IRR ones controlling for the

exposure time, increasing its significance as the model grows in its completeness.

As in the descriptive analysis, having children before migration reduces the

probability of having an additional child in the host country of almost 60% (IRR

0.40). At the same time the migratory pattern has a predominant role in explaining

fertility at destination, as family migrant has almost a double risk of having an

additional child than women who arrived as independent migrant (IRR 1.92).

Even controlling for different characteristics of women, citizenship maintains a

significant role in predicting different levels of fertility. Considering the Romanian

women as the reference group, the Chinese, the Moroccans and other Africans

assume more than double levels of fertility. However, the Moroccans have not the

highest IRR as can be expected according to descriptive analysis: this result occurs

ones controlling for the typology of migration that depict significantly the IRR of

the Moroccans from 2.41 (not shown) to 2.06. Other Asian countries, the Albanians

and other Eastern European countries assume as well incidence rate ratios (IRR)

greater than 1. While the Polish, the Ukrainians/Moldavians and the Latin

Americans do not show values significantly different with respect to the reference

group. In the model 2 and 3 the IRRs by citizenship remain significant even if the

reduce their values, with the exception of the Chinese case. Such result shows how,

after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics and geographical macro-areas of

residence, the cultural disparities still persist and in the Chinese case are not

affected by other predictors. Characteristics of the women in the social and

economic context at destination, analyzed by means of educational attainment and

occupational level, play a role in modeling fertility. However, occupation seems to

have a much stronger impact on fertility that her education at arrival. Particularly

being a home-maker (reference category) is the condition with the highest fertility

level. The levels of occupation (low, medium or high) do not appear significantly

different from each other, while unemployed/inactive positions almost halves the

fertility level (IRR 0.49) with respect to the reference group.


Table 2 − Determinants of number of children after migration. Poisson model.

Women characteristics Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

IRR Sig. IRR Sig. IRR Sig.

Age at arrival 1.12

1.15 * 1.15 * Age at arrival (squared) 0.99

0.99 * 0.99 *

Child born before migration

No ref.

ref.

ref. Yes 0.40 *** 0.41 *** 0.41 ***

Typology of migration

Independent ref.

ref.

ref. Family 1.92 *** 1.83 *** 1.84 ***

Country/Area of citizenship

Romania ref.

ref.

ref. Albania 1.57 *** 1.40 *** 1.39 **

Poland 1.08

1.13

1.19 Ukraine and Moldavia 0.63

0.67

0.69

EU15 andother MDCs 0.52

0.59

0.59 Other Europe 1.50 ** 1.29 * 1.31 *

Morocco 2.06 *** 1.57 *** 1.54 *** Other Africa 2.02 *** 1.84 *** 1.83 *** China 2.39 *** 2.44 *** 2.47 *** Other Asia 1.44 *** 1.26 * 1.24 * Latin America 0.96

0.98

0.95

Educational attainment primary or less

ref.

ref.

lower secondary

0.90

0.89 upper secondary

0.82 * 0.81 *

tertiary or higher

0.79

0.77 * Occupational level

Housewife

ref.

ref. Unemployed/inactive

0.49 *** 0.48 ***

Low level

0.59 *** 0.60 *** Medium level

0.53 *** 0.52 ***

High level

0.60 *** 0.60 *** Resident macro-area

North West

ref. North East

0.90

Centre

0.89 South

0.79 *

Islands 0.81 * Constant 0.01 *** 0.01 *** 0.02 ***

Log likelihood -595,003 -574,184

-573,190

Note: IRR: Incidence Rate Ratio; ref.: reference category; *: p＜0.1; **: p＜0.05; ***: p＜0.01; all the estimates are adjusted according to the number of fertile years spent in Italy (individual exposure).

Source: our elaborations on “Reddito e condizioni di vita delle famiglie con stranieri” data, 2009.

In model 3, Southern and Island regions significantly depress the fertility level

of immigrant women in respect to North-Western ones (IRR respectively equal to

0.79 and 0.81). Such result, although interesting, need further analyses to be

correctly evaluated.


6. Discussion

This paper aims at investigating the quantum dimension of fertility behavior of

immigrant women by analyzing the number of children born after migration. Our

results show how unconventional data and methods can provide useful research

elements on fertility debates of migrants in a context characterized by paucity of

information. This study confirms the importance of the interrelationship between

migratory and reproductive behaviors. The experience of migration can shape

fertility behaviors in different ways. According to the literature, among immigrant

women the country/area of origin (Mussino et al., 2015), the migratory patterns and

the gender roles (Ortensi, 2015) represent important determinants of migrants’

fertility outcomes after migration, while the individual characteristics and

destination contexts seem less important. In particular, citizenship maintains a

significant role in predicting different levels of fertility even controlling for different

characteristics of women: the Africans together with the Chinese assume the highest

fertility level while the East-Europeans show the opposite.

Moreover, there are important intersections among gender role, migration

strategy and labor participation in defining reproductive behaviors of immigrant

women. Migratory strategies related to gender roles show how family migrant have

a higher risk of having a child than women who arrived as independent migrant. In

addition, controlling for the migratory pattern, education does not appear to play a

determinant role while female workers have a lower risk of having a child than

home-workers do. However, in order to complete the shape of fertility behavior,

further analysis will consider, using both the same data and approach, the tempo

dimension of fertility behavior (i.e. timing to first birth).

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SUMMARY

Fertility of immigrant women in Italy: outcomes from unconventional data

This paper contributes to the debate on the immigrant population’s reproductive behaviors

using an unconventional survey not designed for demographic analysis. Applying the own-

child method of young co-residing children, who are unlikely to have left home, we describe

the patterns of the numbers of births realized after migration to women aged 15-40 years old

and we look at the maindeterminants of fertility fitting a Poisson model. According to the

literature, among immigrant women the migratory patterns, the gender roles and the

country/area of origin represent important determinants of migrants’ fertility after migration,

while the individual characteristics and destination contexts seem less important.

________________________ Patrizia GIANNANTONI, Università di Napoli Federico II, [email protected]

Giuseppe GABRIELLI, Università di Napoli Federico II, [email protected]

fertility of immigrant women in italy ......characterizing migrant flows (mussino et al., 2015). in...

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